Catherine Raynes: The Truth About Ruby Cooper and Battle of the Arctic

The Truth About Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent  

If my sister hadn’t been beautiful, none of it would have happened. 

Ruby Cooper and her sister, Erin, live an idyllic life in their close-knit church community in Boston. But when Ruby is sixteen, she is involved in an incident that causes her family’s world to implode. 

Across decades, the fallout leaves a wake of destruction behind Ruby in Dublin and Erin in Boston. 

Not that Ruby wants to think about the past. 

But it can’t stay a secret forever. 

 

Battle of the Arctic by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore  

Winston Churchill called it 'the worst journey in the world'. But was even this telling quote, describing the nightmarish torment experienced while transporting military aid to northern Russia during World War Two, an understatement?  

As this book's title implies, Battle of the Arctic tells a unique story. For much of the conflict was complicated by terrific storms, snow, ice, fog, whales and Arctic mirages, so that what is chronicled at times sounds like a cross between the nightmarish torment experienced by both Shackleton in his ship Endurance and Scott of the Antarctic, and an Arctic version of Robinson Crusoe. The action unfolded as Allied naval and merchant seamen, airmen, submariners, soldiers and intelligence officers delivered on their countries' promise to take arms to Russia notwithstanding the German attempts to hunt them in their aircraft, U-boats and surface fleet spearheaded by Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. 

When ships were attacked, and went down in seas so cold that a man could die after five minutes of immersion, it triggered events reminiscent of the do-or-die moments during the sinking of the Titanic. Men perished one by one in lifeboats, and as castaways on deserted Arctic islands where they were stalked by polar bears. 

Frostbitten and wounded survivors ended up in primitive Russian hospitals where amputations were carried out without anesthetics. Others, while stranded for months in the communist state they were aiding, experienced the murky worlds of the NKVD, and the gulag, as well as famine and prostitution. Using new material unearthed in American, British, Russian and German archives, as well as Polish, Norwegian, French and Dutch sources, and a remarkable collection of vivid witness accounts brought together at the passing of the last survivors, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore can at last shine a revealing light on this extraordinary tale that oscillates between the sailors' eye view on the front line, and the controversies that infuriated world leaders. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at b twenty.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Three to twelve. Time to get your book picts for
this weekend. Catherine Rains, our book reviewer, is here with
us this morning. Cal to Catherine, Morning Jack. Let's begin
with The Truth about Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
So this is about a family who are living in
Boston in the US and living the American dream. Things
are really good. Daughters Erin and Ruby really don't want
or need anything. Their pastor mother and pastor father and
mother love them dearly. But Ruby feels quite different from
her sister. She feels a little less loved because in

(00:46):
her eyes, her sister is smarter and more beautiful. And
then at the age of sixteen and nineteen ninety nine,
Ruby is involved in this terrible incident in the family
fractures and becomes almost irreparable. And Ruby is with her
Irish mother in Dublin and Aaron stays in Boston with
her father. And as the year go by, the depths

(01:08):
of their fractures get worse and Ruby really buries ahead
and from truth and reality as the ramifications of the
incident become more intense and the style of this novel
really draws you in and you get these different first
person accounts over the years, and all of these characters
feel like speaking to you, and the plot and the
storytelling is quite emotional, and there's just all sorts of

(01:30):
things that happen along the way and completely unexpected and
not really where you think the story is going to go.
And it's all about really how human emotions can lead
you and dictate future behaviors. And there's some tough themes
in here, and there's individual perceptions and delusions and things
change and uncover as you go. But if you like
a good psychological thriller, I think this is the one

(01:51):
for you.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh very good. Okay. So The Truth about Ruby Cooper
is by Liz NuGen mixed up Battle of the Arctic
by Hugh so Bag Montefiore.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
This is a really well researched World War two history
and it's the account of that experience of the Arctic convoys.
And it's not really about what was happening politically or economically,
or you know, strategically what was happening, but about the
soldiers and what happened to them in their first convoys.
And to Russia, and it starts in August nineteen forty

(02:22):
one and goes through all of these convoys until sort
of March April nineteen forty five, and it cave as
some of the really notable actions that happened. There was
a destruction of the convoy PQ seventeen in June July
nineteen forty two, and he goes into a lot of
detail about that, but he also draws on these really
different official and unofficial sources that not a lot of

(02:45):
people have consulted before. And so've watched the Norwegian and
Russian and German and American material apart from the familiar
sort of British accounts about this time, and it's just
fascinating these merchants, seafares and these appalling Arctic climate and conditions,
and it's what comes through is the relentless horror of it.
And there's lots of testimonies and people from survivors and

(03:08):
the effects of what happened to them, like frostbite and
the casualties from sinkings, and what the man's hospital was
like with you know, lack of hygiene and painkillers or
even a clean bandage. And he tells the story of
these accounts of these survivors on merchant ships who had
ended up being dispatched from Iceland and the political pressure

(03:28):
and what happens to them to resume their supplies to
the Soviet Union, And it's really what comes through is
just how hard life was for these guys, and the
Soviet Union wasn't particularly hospitable. You know, the locals shun them,
and there was violence and arrest and the medical care
and these isolated communities and just you know, that extreme

(03:48):
condition of the art. It kind of keeps playing on
your mind and the fates of these soldiers, and it's
just it's a really interesting look at that Arctic campaign.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
It just sounds so grim, very.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Grim, very very cold. And I mean that you think
now when we sort of head off and people you know,
head to be ice and stuff, you know, the kinds
of equipment, of the kind of gear that we have
is just so different. You know, in nineteen forty it
must have been horrific, and these guys often had no
experience of these conditions, just didn't know what.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Tex Yeah, of course, yeah, it's not like it's not
like today. So my question for you is who has
the better name do we think because we've had we've
had Hugh sebag montefiure on before with with a couple
of his other works. But then you've got Randolph Fines
as well, who I think is what saran Saranoff twistled
and Wickenham finds third baronyt Obe, which is not bad either.

(04:42):
Just when you know Jack Tame, when you name's Jack Chane,
when you name it's two syllables and that's it, and
one of them is half of your name, is the
word tame, It's hard not to look at the name
like that and feel just a little sliver of envy.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
You know. I think I'd have to go with Randolph Fines. Yeah,
that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
It's not bad. A Hugh sebag Montefiorre is not a
bad second though. So his latest book is Battle of
the Arctic. Catherine's first pick for us this week the
Truth about Ruby Cooper by Lis Nugent. Both of those
will be up on the news Talk ZB website.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news Talk ZEDB from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.